Leben, an Everett fighter, is top contender in booming sport

P-I STAFF

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, July 26, 2006

It's his only job, and one he describes with all the flourish of someone who sells insurance for a living.

"That's what I do," he said. "Everybody always asks, 'What's it feel like to be in there?' It doesn't feel like anything to me. That's work time."

Instead of reporting to an office, Leben works in an octagon. Instead of punching a time clock, he punches opponents.

The job rules are minimal and performance evaluation is based upon an ability to render an opponent unconscious or unwilling to continue.

Leben is pretty good at this job. He may end up being great. He is 25 years old with leaded fists, cauliflowered ears and growing stature as one of the fastest-rising fighters in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

His star status could be in jeopardy. Leben is 15-2 heading into his Aug. 17 fight against Jorge Santiago, but he is coming off his worst professional showing. On June 28, in the main event of a televised card, Leben suffered a 49-second defeat to Brazilian star Anderson Silva. It was his first loss in six fights.

"Everybody loses eventually," UFC president Dana White said. "This fight (Aug. 17) is very important for him. He needs to come out and put on a show and show everybody that he got caught. Anybody can get caught. He can come back from that."

Mixed-martial arts is the name applied to the competition, but that's really just a made-up term to encompass an honest-to-goodness fight. There are a few rules for safety's sake: no head butts, no hair pulling, no groin shots and absolutely no wimps since elbows, fists, chokeholds and armbars are allowed.

Leben trains in Kirkland at AMC Pankration, and the guy in our backyard is moving to the forefront of a sport that's not knocking at the front door so much as getting ready to kick it off the hinges.

"Chris is a tough guy, there's no doubt about that," White said.

For now, the sport has made Leben more famous than rich. He makes enough that he bought a house in Everett, but not so much he can afford a replacement for his '89 Audi with bad brakes.

But Leben can't eat at a restaurant or walk in a mall without someone asking for an autograph or offering encouragement. Not that he minds attention. He dyes his hair red before every fight, paints his toenails black and takes a puncher's chance into every bout.

"I absolutely think he has what it takes to be one of the top fighters in the world," said Randy Couture, a Washington state high school wrestling champion who became four-time UFC champion. "He has the mentality to continue to learn, to continue to develop technique and put himself out there.

"He's not afraid to try things. He's not afraid to risk."

Ready for prime time

Leben sits at a table in Johnny Rockets in Las Vegas, a side order of French fries in front of him and a cheeseburger on the way. A small bandage is affixed to his eye, his left hand is swollen and his stomach is empty after spending the better part of 15 minutes earlier in the evening pummeling an Italian kid whose last name he never could quite remember.

This was after a fight on April 6, which was held at the Hard Rock Casino and televised live on Spike TV. His victory improved his record to 15-1.

Leben received two checks this night, each for about $7,000. One was for appearing in the fight, the other for winning it. It's a long way from the $250,000 and more the top fighters in the promotion can receive. Last year, Pride Fighting Championships had a bout in Japan where each fighter was paid $2 million.

Leben wrestled in high school at Benson Technical in Portland, where he grew up. He was in the Army, where he had been told he would get a chance to try out for the wrestling team. He never did get that opportunity, which he didn't like much at all. He then left, which the Army didn't like so much, either. He ended up with a less-than-honorable discharge.

His sense of individualism is as strong as his uppercut, which explains why he was never big on team sports.

"I don't like sports where you have to pass the ball," he said.

There is a streak in Leben's personality that attracts him to risk. If danger is a red flag, then Leben is a bull.

But being fearless only gets you to the door of the eight-sided cage; it doesn't do anything when you're on the ground against an opponent who's trying to cut off your air supply.

Forging a champion

The tire weighs 350 pounds, but Leben is trying to treat it like a pancake, straining every ounce of his body to flip it from one side to the other.

It is late in the morning and Leben is at End Zone Athletics in Kirkland for his daily conditioning. In the evening, he will train next door at AMC Pankration, which has been producing fighting champions for more than a decade.

Matt Hume is his coach, the North American trainer for Japan's Pride Fighting Championships, which has drawn crowds of more than 100,000 to events in Asia. Hume's workouts are grueling, and on this morning he stands over Leben, who's on his back, and drops an 18-pound medicine ball onto Leben's stomach. Leben grunts each time it lands, and hands the ball back to Hume. The process is repeated 67 times in the span of a minute.

It's not fighting that's a full-time job so much as the training for a fight. It's what separates a professional fighter from the tough guy sitting at the end of the bar. Well, that and the beer belly.

"The guys that come in the gym and want to beat somebody up, and just be tough, they last about two weeks," Leben said. "They get beat up, beat up and pretty soon their ego gets busted.

"They can't take that."

Thing is, Leben looked almost like one of those guys if you looked no further than the reality-television show he starred in.

It was called "The Ultimate Fighter," and it premiered in spring 2005. Leben was one of 16 fighters chosen for the show. The fighters were divided into two teams. Their training was documented and each episode included a two-round exhibition fight to eliminate a fighter.

The show culminated in two fighters winning six-figure contracts, one at the heavyweight classification and the other at middleweight. Never mind that those "six-figure" deals were spaced out over three years -- or that fighters like Leben who didn't win were also signed to contracts -- it was a tipping point for the sport's popularity, especially when the final event attracted more than 2.8 million viewers.

"I knew it would work," said White, the UFC president. "I knew if we got this thing on television, people would dig it and it would just skyrocket from there."

The world got an eyeful of Leben, all the rough edges and ruffled feathers that made for compelling television. The first night in the house, he relieved himself on the pillow of a fellow fighter. It was just a little spritz, he called it.

"He always had a tendency to be on the brash side, to be a little rough around the edges," Couture said. "That is something we were constantly working on Chris with, his temper, his attitude toward other people."

Another, more personal confrontation was initiated by another fighter. Bobby Southworth taunted Leben for not having a father while growing up and later watched as another contestant squirted Leben with a garden hose while Leben was sleeping.

Leben punched out a window and kicked down a door. The resolution? Leben was paired in a fight against the guy who turned the hose on him. Leben lost the fight, but the ratings victory from that program was part of a tipping point for both the show and the sport.

"As far as changing my life, I got a few free beers out of the deal," Leben said. "I'm definitely more recognizable."

The weight-ing game

On most days, Leben weighs more than 200 pounds. He fights at 185, which means that in the days before the fight he will squeeze more than 15 pounds off his body.

Losing weight is a part of fighting. The worst part, to be most specific. A fighter treats his body like a sponge, squeezing weight out by sweating off water to reach the target weight, and then reloading by force-feeding fluids.

The weigh-in for Leben's April 6 fight began at 3 p.m. the day before the bout. Leben was 186 pounds, making weight since Nevada gives the fighter a pound of leeway.

Hume handed Leben a liter of Pedialyte as soon as he stepped off the stage. It's a product marketed for babies suffering from dehydration or diarrhea.

Leben ate two meals over the next six hours, wolfed down cheese, crackers and grapes in between while forcing as many fluids as possible. At one point he stood up because he was too full to sit.

At 10 o'clock, Leben weighed 200 pounds. His hotel room was littered with empty water bottles and Pedialyte jugs after gaining 14 pounds in less than seven hours. He still hadn't peed.

He couldn't sleep the night before the weigh-in because he was too dehydrated. He slept 12 hours the night before the fight, waking up a little after noon. His weight was back and his wait was almost over.

"When I actually get to go and fight, that's my reward," Leben said. "I enjoy fighting. I enjoy getting out there in front of everybody and having everybody see me and watch me perform. I get a kick out of it."

The overhead lights in the arena are dimmed, leaving Leben a shadow at one edge of the octagon.

Leben is a southpaw whose style is unorthodox and his power can be overwhelming. He has heavy hands, to borrow a fighter phrase, which is tough to define and impossible to fake.

"What he lacks in refined technique he makes up for with heart with that just pure desire and determination," Couture said.

Leben's fight with Fioravanti was like a bad argument -- it was that one-sided. When both fighters were standing, Leben alternated between punching Fioravanti in the head and kneeing him in the stomach. When they were on the ground, Leben was always on top, landing elbows and fists to Fioravanti's face.

Fioravanti lasted all three 5-minute rounds, but don't mistake a courageous performance with a competitive one. Still, Leben was disappointed, a letdown that almost always occurs when a fight is decided by judges and not something as definitive as a knockout.

"He's really unhappy with his performance," Hume said. "But I'm glad he's unhappy with his performance. Because he dominated the fight, won a unanimous decision and he's unhappy with it. That tells me he wants to be great, not just win fights.

"That's the kind of fighter I want."

Three months of training are over, but his night is just beginning. After his cheeseburger, he heads back across the street to the Hard Rock, where he cashed his two checks. He pays his coach and trainer, then gives a good chunk of his earnings to his best friend's mother for safe keeping.

Then he moved to the bar, where he accepted congratulations and a drink or two. And here he is, in the middle of the casino that hosted his fight, looking out on the craps tables and slot machines, and the setting invokes the explanation Leben provided weeks earlier about why fighting appealed to him.

"I like the feeling of putting it all on the line out there and hopefully coming out on top," he said. "Once they lock that door, it's just you and your opponent in there and if you lose or something happens, it's nobody's fault but your own.